Ryan Payne

Ryan Payne (1984-) was a Citizens for Constitutional Freedom leader.

Biography
Ryan Payne was born in 1984 in southern California, and in 2001 he enlisted in the US Army. He became a Sergeant in a military intelligence unit and served in the Iraq War, but he lost faith in the United States government after promised close air support during a 2005 counter-insurgency mission never happened. Payne joined the West Mountain Rangers rump militia upon returning home, later claiming to have trained a team of sharpshooters during the Bundy standoff of 2014 in Bunkerville, Nevada. Payne became famous when he emerged as a leader of the Citizens for Constitutional Freedom militia that took over Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in January 2016, saying that the group would stay at the park as long as it took for the government to give national parks over to the people as hunting grounds.